Scrap

The notorious Exxon Valdez, responsible for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history until the BP disaster two years ago, is being scrapped. The tanker, renamed the Oriental Nicety and converted into an ore carrier, was sold by Cosco for about $16 million to Maryland-based Global Marketing Systems Inc., Bloomberg News reports. The 1989 Valdez spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound, damaging 700...

DURHAM, Ore. - Oregon officials voted unanimously Friday to jettison the state's disastrous health insurance exchange and switch to the federal system, admitting disappointment and defeat in an arena where the state had been a trailblazer. With its 7-0 vote, the board of directors for Cover Oregon acknowledged that the state exchange was too expensive and too troubled to fix. Although the state has spent an estimated $248 million to get the operation up and running, it never enrolled a single private insurance customer online.

Gov. Jerry Brown is under increasing pressure to suspend California's participation in the controversial federal immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communities. The program requires state and local police to share the fingerprints of anyone who is arrested with federal officials, who then check them against their own databases to determine the arrestee's immigration status. In theory, Secure Communities sounds like a sensible idea. It was sold to Congress as a way for the federal government to use its limited resources to nab dangerous immigrants who have a history of criminal convictions.

Officials at NASA and SpaceX were working through the weekend to see whether they could still safely rocket a cargo capsule to the International Space Station on Monday, despite the failure of one of the backup computers in the system that helps dock the pod in space. While workers continued to prepare for a Monday afternoon launch, NASA said a final determination would likely come Sunday afternoon. The deployment of 5,000 pounds of supplies to the space station by SpaceX's unmanned Falcon 9 rocket has already been delayed a month because of other technical issues.

State officials said Thursday that they will start a task force to target problems posed by scrap metal recycling operations across California, which have been loosely regulated and linked to environmental contamination and numerous fires and explosions in recent years. The move by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control marks the first large-scale attempt to coordinate oversight of such operations, which handle hazardous metals and can generate toxic dust that pollutes the air and the ocean.

Re "Local ports initiate antipollution program," Oct. 2 Thank you for this informative article on this mostly excellent program to clean the air of one of America's largest ports. I feel compelled to comment, however, on the scrapping of nonconforming big rigs. An enormous amount of energy goes into the manufacture of a tractor truck, which is essentially amortized over the useful life of the truck. In other words, if you scrap a running, potentially useful vehicle, you are wasting energy and creating pollution by doing so -- even without considering the energy costs of manufacturing a new truck to replace it. This is contrary to the green intentions of the program.

A British ferry that capsized last March off Belgium with the loss of almost 200 lives was sold for scrap for less than $1.65 million by its owners who could have made millions more by allowing the vessel to return to passenger service, it was announced Monday. The ferry's operator, Townsend Thoresen, decided to sell the Herald of Free Enterprise because sailing it again would be "inappropriate," a spokesman said.

By voice vote, the 42-member House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill to abolish the $20-billion synthetic fuels program in 90 days and take back most of the $7.9 billion that it still has for subsidizing projects to convert coal and shale to liquid and gas fuels. With approval by the Energy Committee, the legislation now moves to the House Banking Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the synthetic fuels program.

The Bigeye bomb, the Pentagon's proposed new generation chemical weapon, is "a horror story" with too many unresolved problems and should be scrapped, a bipartisan House and Senate group said today. The critics released a General Accounting Office report that concluded the weapon "presents major and continuing inconsistencies" and is not ready for production. The bomb is designed to combine two chemicals in a deadly compound shortly after it is dropped from an aircraft.

During World War II, the Japanese were accused of taking American scrap metal they bought before Pearl Harbor and shooting it back at us in the form of high explosives. In the great trade war of the 1980s, the Japanese are again buying scrap. Only this time it is wastepaper, and they are shooting it back at us in the form of containers for televisions, video-cassette recorders and the like. Call it the era of global recycling.

More than a year ago, Facebook unveiled plans for a drastic redesign of its website's News Feed that would place a greater emphasis on pictures and look a lot more like the social network's mobile app. Ultimately, Facebook discarded that look and went with a less drastic redesign, and the reason for that decision was that many of the company's users still have older computers and laptops, according to a blog post by Julie Zhuo, the social network's...

John Mireles spent six years preparing to become a firefighter. The Signal Hill resident took fire science classes and worked nights on an ambulance crew, in addition to his full-time day job. He said he passed the Los Angeles Fire Department written exam, made it through an interview and background check and reached the final stages of the hiring process. But last week he was among hundreds of candidates who received a terse, two-sentence email from city personnel officials: They would no longer be hiring from a pool of applicants who had advanced through a yearlong screening process.

Thailand's constitutional court Friday nullified the Feb. 2 election won by supporters of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra amid an opposition boycott, prolonging the country's 4-month-old political crisis and threatening a deeper toll on its tourism-dependent economy. Opposition supporters celebrated the 6-3 court ruling that said the vote was invalid because not all polls were open to receive voters on the same day. Antigovernment protesters had blocked registration in 28 constituencies, forcing election workers to delay voting at the affected polls.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, responding to a barrage of criticism about a Fire Department hiring system that eliminated thousands of qualified applicants, announced Thursday afternoon that he is scrapping the process. "I have determined that the Fire Department's recruiting process is fatally flawed," Garcetti said in a statement. The mayor said he made his decision after he discovered that Fire Department "staff organized special recruiting workshops for LAFD insiders. " A class of 70 new recruits is in training.

Some filmmakers want to show you their heart, while others are content to train their cameras on their navels. Director-writer-star Kevin Hamedani opts for the latter category with his quasi-autobiographical buddy comedy "Junk," an insular, fitfully amusing look at the film festival world from the perspective of two novice screenwriters. Hamedani and his co-writer and costar Ramon Isao made the political B-movie "Zombies of Mass Destruction. " In "Junk," they play fictionalized versions of themselves - Kaveh and Raul, feuding writing partners who collaborated on the political B-movie "Islama-Rama 2: Mustafa Lives" and need to produce another screenplay on the quick to impress a powerful Japanese genre producer Yukio Tai (James Hong)

World light-middleweight boxing champion Carlos Molina of Chicago remained jailed in Las Vegas on Friday, unable to keep his scheduled Saturday night co-main event title defense against unbeaten Jermall Charlo at MGM Grand. Instead of having a shot to be the next opponent of main-event fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez of Mexico, International Boxing Federation champion Molina faces questioning from immigration officials with the prospect of deportation possible, according to his attorney and promoter.

A rhythmic clamor of pounding hammers, buzzing grinders and clanging metal reverberates from the stone gateway of Eritrea's oldest open-air market. At first glance, the dusty bazaar behind downtown Asmara appears to be little more than a sprawling junkyard of rusted car parts, broken appliances and scraps of steel. But this isn't where old metal comes to die. It comes to be reborn. Used artillery shells are recast as combs for beauty salons. Empty vegetable-oil tins morph into coffee pots.

More than 1,300 foreign tourists have scrapped trips to China since martial law was imposed on Beijing last Saturday, the official China Daily said today. Quoting sources from the China International Travel Service, the newspaper said more than 100 tours, some planned as far ahead as September, had been called off. The newspaper said hotel bookings and souvenir sales also dropped. China had 1.84 million foreign visitors last year and earned $2.2 billion from tourism. The United States, Britain and Japan have advised their citizens to restrict travel to China because of the current unrest.

DES MOINES - For more than 40 years, Iowa voters have played a vital role in picking the nation's president, culling the field of hopefuls and helping launch a fortunate handful all the way to the White House. For about 35 of those years, Iowa has been the target of jealousy and scorn, mainly from outsiders who say the state, the first to vote in the presidential contest, is too white and too rural; that its caucuses, precinct-level meetings of party faithful, are too quirky and too exclusionary to play such a key role in the nominating process.